Quotes About Things That Mattered to Mike Farmer

 Mike was passionate about many things in life.   Below are some selected quotes about just a few of his passions:

• Teaching, 
• Education, 
• Learning, 
• Life-long Learning, 
• Space, 
• Science, 
• Environment and Ecology, 
• Nature and the  Outdoors, 
• Art and Science and the seams where they meet, 

.....and the never ending 

• Search for Truth and the Unknown.

We can't stop seeking the unknown.   We can't stop looking for what we don't understand. How are we going to understand, if we don't seek it?

-- Mike Farmer in a newspaper article 

from 2005 about space travel

About Teaching and Education

Why Are Teachers Like The Light From Stars in the Universe??

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. 

These words from Henry Adams speak to the lasting impact that Mike Farmer had on his students.  Below are additional quotes about education and teaching ......topics which Mike was passionate and about which he devoted his life to.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.

--- Plutarch, On Listening to Lectures.

A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning. 

 ---Brad Henry

Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.

--- Solomon Ortiz

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

― Nelson Mandela

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards; and curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion as the mind is contented and happy.

--- Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard 

To teach is to touch the heart and impel it to action.

--- Louis Sullivan, architect,  "Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings".

The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.

--- Alexandra K. Trenfor,

One mark of a great educator is the ability to lead students out to new places where even the educator has never been.

-----Thomas Groome

An original thinker and able teacher very soon attracts a large class and vice versa.

--- Lord Watson, Caird v. Sime (1887),

Why is it that in most children education seems to destroy the creative urge? Why do so many boys and girls leave school with blunted perceptions and a closed mind? A majority of young people seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis forty years before they get the physical kind. Another question: why do some people remain open and elastic into extreme old age, whereas others become rigid and unproductive before they're fifty? .

--- Aldous Huxley

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre.

--- Gail Godwin,  

Education is man's going forward from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty.

--- Kenneth G. Johnson,

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

--- G.K. Chesterton, 

I truly believe that if Mike Farmer was compiling this compendium of quotes he would insist on including this final quote from a young american in 2007:

I personally believe that U. S. Americans are unable to [locate the U. S. on a world map] because, uh,....... some people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh,..... I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq,..... everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should—our education over here in the U. S. should help the U. S., uh, ......or, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.

--- Caitlin Upton at the 2007 Miss Teen USA